Death of the Composer or All Tongues are Mothers

Brandon LaBelle is a sound artist and writer from Los Angeles. Working in the field of sound- performance- and installation-art since 1992, LaBelle's work aims to draw attention to the dynamics of sound as it is found within spaces and objects, public events and interactions, language and the body. Through a performative interaction with objects, found-sound, and minimal electronics, the work draws attention to the quality and nature of what is already there through an emphasis on and displacement of listening and interaction, as a technological and architectural glitch. LaBelle's interest in site-specificity reflects a desire to consider the relationships and tensions between art and a broader social environment. His work has been featured in "Bitstreams" at the Whitney Museum, in "Amplitude of Chance" at Kawasaki City Museum Japan, at the 9th International Symposium of Electronic Arts in Liverpool and Manchester, Sampling Rage Festival in Berlin, the ICA London, Experimental Intermedia in New York, the Arizona State University Museum, and as part of "Sound as Media" at ICC in Tokyo. He is also the co-editor of "Site of Sound: of Architecture and The Ear" and "Writing Aloud: The Sonics of Language", both published by Errant Bodies, and curator of the Beyond Music Series at Beyond Baroque Center, Los Angeles CA. His work has been released on the SELEKTION, Fringes Recordings, Ground Fault, and La Bruit Secret labels. Cfr.nn. Arch. 184.45; 185.29 Technical Breakdown is an international sound art exhibition, which took place uin the public space of Cophenagen, denmark in November 2005 - January 2006. The exhibition consists of 5 different listening posts presenting 30 sound works by artists from 10 different countries.The sound art exhibition Technical Breakdown takes as its starting point the chaotic and unpredictable field of communication in which misunderstanding and the unspeakable take on a life of their own. The exhibition encourages "a grant of self conduct" practice, setting loose sounds and feedback from all spheres making it possible for them to diffuse and mingle into the sound-scapes we inhabit.The exhibition consists of 5 different listening posts, eahc presenting its own perpective pn the error. The listening posts introduce the audience to a numebr of unique sound worlds, using the technical breakdown itself as a strategy to give voice and body to that which would not otherwise surfece. Through circuit bending, cut-ups and samples, the sound art reaches into the environment and breaches the continuity of our rational experience of the world. The art works show us unconcious moods and phenomena, and connects circuits not designed to be connected. The surroundings are animated by sound which again enhance our sense of space. The sound works mark the installation sites by interfering and underlining, amplifying or unermining the surroundings. In this way the sites themselves take part in creating cross-references between the many different layers of sound that one is likely to be tuned in on simoultaneously, though at different levels of intensity. The listening post Panic Room turns up the paranoia and surveillance atmosphere in the shopping centre Field's. The intimidating refuge criticises as well as imitates consumer culture buffoon and chaos with sample of sound from media and the collapse of discourses. At The Culture House KIB, The Cones couples the harbour front with the another dimension. The sounds function as a portal linking the site to be underground and the mystical. At The Royal Library The Black Diamond, The Glass breaks the borders between inside and outside - between private and public - with its fragile, crisp sounds and forces itself on the visitor's itnimate sphere. At the cinema and film institute, Cinemateket, Sonographic Stele translates picture itno sound and sound intopicture. One language talks on behalf of the oher an dinitiates acomplicated dialogue on the verge of nonsense. In the web-basedc listening post, City on the Net everything is inter-twined cacophony - no sound is limited to its original context, while virtual cities are recreated as soundscapes. The artists participating in Technical Breakdown all contemplate events and notions that are out of our reach - and out of control. In the exhibition sound layers ranging from the fictive ti the real, from the cognitive to the evocative come together and form a sonic web around us.